truth

There's a fellow on the station
(He dropped in on a call,
Just casual—to stay a pleasant week),
He’s a banker’s near relation,
Strongly built, and very tall,
Not altogether destitute of cheek;
He’s a descent judge of whisky,
And the hardest working youth
Who ever played a polo on a cob;
His anecdotes are risky,
And to tell the honest truth,
He’s waiting here until he gets a job.
He’s waiting, as I mention,
And whene’er he says his prayers,
Which he doesn’t do as frequently as some,

I

Our eunuch dreams, all seedless in the light,
Of light and love the tempers of the heart,
Whack their boys' limbs,
And, winding-footed in their shawl and sheet,
Groom the dark brides, the widows of the night
Fold in their arms.

The shades of girls, all flavoured from their shrouds,
When sunlight goes are sundered from the worm,
The bones of men, the broken in their beds,
By midnight pulleys that unhouse the tomb.

II

In this our age the gunman and his moll

Others, I am not the first,
Have willed more mischief than they durst:
If in the breathless night I too
Shiver now, 'tis nothing new.

More than I, if truth were told,
Have stood and sweated hot and cold,
And through their reins in ice and fire
Fear contended with desire.

Agued once like me were they,
But I like them shall win my way
Lastly to the bed of mould
Where there's neither heat nor cold.

But from my grave across my brow
Plays no wind of healing now,

Full fifty merry maids I heard
One summer morn a-singing;
And each was like a joyous bird
With spring-clear not a-ringing.
It was an old-time soldier song
That held their happy voices:
Oh how it's good to swing along
When youth rejoices!

Then lo! I dreamed long years had gone,
They passed again ungladly.
Their backs were bent, their cheeks were wan,
Their eyes were staring sadly.
Their ranks were thinned by full a score

We were smoking some of this knockout weed when
Operation Memory was announced. To his separate bed
Each soldier went, counting backwards from a hundred
With a needle in his arm. And there I was, in the middle
Of a recession, in the middle of a strange city, between jobs
And apartments and wives. Nobody told me the gun was loaded.

We'd been drinking since early afternoon. I was loaded.
The doctor made me recite my name, rank, and serial number when
I woke up, sweating, in my civvies. All my friends had jobs

Have the blasts of sorrow worn thee,
Have the rocks of danger torn thee,
And thus shifted, wreck-like drifted,
Wouldst thou find a port in time?
Vain the quest! That word sublime—
God’s great one word,
Silent never, pealeth ever,
Onward!
Hast thou done all loving duty,
Hast thou clothed thy soul with beauty,
And wouldst rest then, wholly blest then,
In some sunny lapse of time?
Vain the hope! The word sublime—
God’s great one word,

"She loves with love that cannot tire:
And if, ah, woe! she loves alone,
Through passionate duty love flames higher,
As grass grows taller round a stone."
Coventry Patmore.
SO, the truth's out. I 'll grasp it like a snake, --
It will not slay me. My heart shall not break
Awhile, if only for the children's sake.
For his too, somewhat. Let him stand unblamed;
None say, he gave me less than honor claimed,
Except -- one trifle scarcely worth being named --

I

Not once in all our days of poignant love,
Did I a single instant give to thee
My undivided being wholly free.
Not all thy potent passion could remove
The barrier that loomed between to prove
The full supreme surrendering of me.
Oh, I was beaten, helpless utterly
Against the shadow-fact with which I strove.
For when a cruel power forced me to face
The truth which poisoned our illicit wine,
That even I was faithless to my race
Bleeding beneath the iron hand of thine,

We were out on the hills that night
To watch our sheep;
Drowsily by the fire we lay
Where the waning flame did flicker and leap,
And some were weary and half asleep,
And some talked low of their flocks and the fright
Of a lion that day.

But I had drawn from the others apart;
I was only a lad,
And the night's great silence so filled my heart
That I dared not talk and I dared not jest;
The moon had gone down behind the hill
And even the wind of the desert was still;

Little one, you have been buzzing in the books,
Flittering in the newspapers and drinking beer with lawyers
And amid the educated men of the clubs you have been getting an earful of speech from trained tongues.
Take an earful from me once, go with me on a hike
Along sand stretches on the great inland sea here
And while the eastern breeze blows on us and the restless surge
Of the lake waves on the breakwater breaks with an ever fresh monotone,
Let us ask ourselves: What is truth? what do you or I know?